Bush administration officials are probably having second thoughts about their
decision to play hardball with former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Joe Wilson is
a contender. When you play hardball with Joe, you better be prepared to deal
with some serious rebound.

After Wilson wrote a critically timed New York Times essay exposing as false
George W. Bush's claim that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger, high
officials in the White House contacted several Washington reporters and leaked
the news that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent.

Wilson isn't waiting for George W. Bush to hand over the perp. In
mid-October, the former ambassador began passing copies of an embarrassing
internal report to reporters across the US. The-Edge has received copies of this
document.

The 56-page investigation was assembled by USAF Colonel (Ret.) Sam Gardiner.
"Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence,
Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological
Operations in Gulf II" identifies more than 50 stories about the Iraq war
that were faked by government propaganda artists in a covert campaign to
"market" the military invasion of Iraq.

Gardiner has credentials. He has taught at the National War College, the Air
War College and the Naval Warfare College and was a visiting scholar at the
Swedish Defense College.

According to Gardiner, "It was not bad intelligence" that lead to
the quagmire in Iraq, "It was an orchestrated effort [that] began before
the war" that was designed to mislead the public and the world. Gardiner's
research lead him to conclude that the US and Britain had conspired at the
highest levels to plant "stories of strategic influence" that were
known to be false.

The Times of London described the $200-million-plus US operation as a
"meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress, and
the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein."

The multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign run out of the White House and
Defense Department was, in Gardiner's final assessment "irresponsible in
parts" and "might have been illegal."

"Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to
come to the right decisions," Gardiner explains. Consequently, "Truth
became a casualty. When truth is a casualty, democracy receives collateral
damage." For the first time in US history, "we allowed strategic
psychological operations to become part of public affairs... [W]hat has happened
is that information warfare, strategic influence, [and] strategic psychological
operations pushed their way into the important process of informing the peoples
of our two democracies."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced plans to create an Office of
Strategic Influence early in 2002. At the same time British Prime Minister Tony
Blair's Strategy Director Alastair Campbell was setting up an identical
operation in London.

As soon as Pvt. Jessica Lynch was airlifted from her hospital bed, the first
call from her "rescue team" went, not to military officials but to Jim
Wilkinson, the White House's top propaganda official stationed in Iraq.

White House critics were quick to recognize that "strategic
influence" was a euphemism for disinformation. Rumsfeld had proposed
establishing the country's first Ministry of Propaganda.

The criticism was so severe that the White House backed away from the plan.
But on November 18, several months after the furor had died down, Rumsfeld
arrogantly announced that he had not been deterred. "If you want to savage
this thing, fine: I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the
name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done -- and I
have."

Gardiner's dogged research identified a long list of stories
that passed through Rumsfeld's propaganda mill. According to Gardiner,
"there were over 50 stories manufactured or at least engineered that
distorted the picture of Gulf II for the American and British people."

Those stories include:

The link between terrorism, Iraq and 9/11

Iraqi agents meeting with 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta

Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons.

Iraq's purchase of nuclear materials from Niger.

Saddam Hussein's development of nuclear weapons.

Aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons

The existence of Iraqi drones, WMD cluster bombs and Scud missiles.

Iraq's threat to target the US with cyber warfare attacks.

The rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch.

The surrender of a 5,000-man Iraqi brigade.

Iraq executing Coalition POWs.

Iraqi soldiers dressing in US and UK uniforms to commit atrocities.

The exact location of WMD facilities

WMDs moved to Syria.

Every one of these stories received extensive publicity and helped form
indelible public impressions of the "enemy" and the progress of
the invasion. Every one of these stories was false.

"I know what I am suggesting is serious. I did not come to these
conclusions lightly," Gardiner admits. "I'm not going to address
why they did it. That's something I don't understand even after all the
research." But the fact remained that "very bright and even
well-intentioned officials found how to control the process of governance in
ways never before possible."

A Battle between Good and Evil

Gardiner notes that cocked-up stories about Saddam's WMDs "was only a
very small part of the strategic influence, information operations and
marketing campaign conducted on both sides of the Atlantic."

The "major thrust" of the campaign, Gardiner explains, was
"to make a conflict with Iraq seem part of a struggle between good and
evil. Terrorism is evil... we are the good guys.

"The second thrust is what propaganda theorists would call the 'big
lie.' The plan was to connect Iraq with the 9/11 attacks. Make the American
people believe that Saddam Hussein was behind those attacks."

The means for pushing the message involved: saturating the media with
stories, 24/7; staying on message; staying ahead of the news cycle; managing
expectations; and finally, being prepared to "use information to attack
and punish critics."

Audition in Afghanistan

The techniques that proved so successful in Operation Iraqi Freedom were
first tried out during the campaign to build public support for the US
attack on Afghanistan.

Rumsfeld hired Rendon Associates, a private PR firm that had been deeply
involved in the first Gulf War. Founder John Rendon (who calls himself an
"information warrior") proudly boasts that he was the one
responsible for providing thousands of US flags for the Kuwaiti people to
wave at TV cameras after their "liberation" from Iraqi troops in
1991.

The White House Coalition Information Center was set up by Karen Hughes in
November 2001. (In January 2003, the CIC was renamed the Office for Global
Communications.) The CIC hit on a cynical plan to curry favor for its attack
on Afghanistan by highlighting "the plight of women in
Afghanistan." CIC's Jim Wilkinson later called the Afghan women
campaign "the best thing we've done."

Gardiner is quick with a correction. The campaign "was not about
something they did. It was about a story they created... It was not a
program with specific steps or funding to improve the conditions of
women."

The coordination between the propaganda engines of Washington and London
even involved the respective First Wives. On November 17, 2001, Laura Bush
issued a shocking statement: "Only the terrorists and the Taliban
threaten to pull out women's fingernails for wearing nail polish."
Three days later, a horrified Cherie Blaire told the London media, "In
Afghanistan, if you wear nail polish, you could have your nails torn
out."

Misleading via Innuendo

Time and again, US reporters accepted the CIC news leaks without question.
Among the many examples that Gardiner documented was the use of the
"anthrax scare" to promote the administration's pre-existing plan
to attack Iraq.

In both the US and the UK, "intelligence sources" provided a
steady diet of unsourced allegations to the media to suggest that Iraq and
Al Qaeda terrorists were behind the deadly mailing of anthrax-laden letters.

It wasn't until December 18, that the White House confessed that it was
"increasingly looking like" the anthrax came from a US military
installation. The news was released as a White House "paper"
instead of as a more prominent White House "announcement." As a
result, the idea that Iraq or Al Qaeda were behind the anthrax plot
continued to persist. Gardiner believes this was an intentional part of the
propaganda campaign. "If a story supports policy, even if incorrect,
let it stay around."

In a successful propaganda campaign, Gardiner wrote, "We would have
expected to see the creation [of] stories to sell the policy; we would have
expected to see the same stories used on both sides of the Atlantic. We saw
both. The number of engineered or false stories from US and UK stories is
long."

The US and Britain: The Axis of Disinformation

Before the coalition invasion began on March 20, 2003, Washington and
London agreed to call their illegal pre-emptive military aggression an
"armed conflict" and to always reference the Iraqi government as
the "regime." Strategic communications managers in both capitols
issued lists of "guidance" terms to be used in all official
statements. London's 15 Psychological Operations Group paralleled
Washington's Office of Global Communications.

In a departure from long military tradition, the perception managers even
took over the naming of the war. Military code names were originally chosen
for reasons of security. In modern US warfare, however, military code names
have become "part of the marketing." There was Operation Nobel
Eagle, Operation Valiant Strike, Operation Provide Comfort, Operation
Enduring Freedom, Operation Uphold Democracy and, finally, Operation Iraqi
Freedom.

The "Rescue" of Jessica Lynch

The Pentagon's control over the news surrounding the capture and rescue of
Pfc. Jessica Lynch receives a good deal of attention in Gardiner's report.
"From the very beginning it was called an 'ambush'," Gardiner
noted. But, he pointed out, "If you drive a convoy into enemy lines,
turn around and drive back, it's not an ambush. Military officers who are
very careful about how they talk about operations would normally not be
sloppy about describing this kind of event," Gardiner complained.
"This un-military kind of talk is one of the reasons I began doing this
research."

One of the things that struck Gardiner as revealing was the fact that, as
Newsweek reported: "as soon as Lynch was in the air, [the Joint
Operations Center] phoned Jim Wilkinson, the top civilian communications
aide to CENTCOM Gen. Tommy Franks."

It struck Gardiner as inexplicable that the first call after Lynch's
rescue would go to the Director of Strategic Communications, the White
House's top representative on the ground.

On the morning of April 3, the Pentagon began leaking information on
Lynch's rescue that sought to establish Lynch as "America's new
Rambo." The Washington Post repeated the story it received from the
Pentagon: that Lynch "sustained multiple gunshot wounds" and
fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldier... firing her weapon until
she ran out of ammunition."

Lynch's family confused the issue by telling the press that their daughter
had not sustained any bullet wounds. Lynch's parents subsequently refused to
talk to the press, explaining that they had been "told not to talk
about it." (Weeks later, the truth emerged. Lynch was neither stabbed
nor shot. She was apparently injured while falling from her vehicle.)

Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers let the story stand during an April 3 press
conference although both had been fully briefed on Lynch's true condition.

"Again, we see the pattern," Gardiner observed. "When the
story on the street supports the message, it will be left there by a
non-answer. The message is more important than the truth. Even Central
Command kept the story alive by not giving out details."

Gardiner saw another break with procedure. The information on the rescue
that was released to the Post "would have been very highly
classified" and should have been closely guarded. Instead, it was used
as a tool to market the war. "This was a major pattern from the
beginning of the marketing campaign throughout the war," Gardiner
wrote. "It was okay to release classified information if it supported
the message."